I'm struck my Genentech's prominence, both as #4 at Wired and #6 at Business 2.0. How can Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who is President of Product Development at Genentech, matter more than the CEO's of Microsoft, HP, Yahoo or News Corp? There's something a bit fishy here. Is it possible that the Genentech has slipped one of their new drugs into the tech press' collective watercooler?

Will biotech kill the blockbuster? Rather than aiming drugs at broad
populations with scattershot results, Genentech is developing
treatments for specific patient groups. Its success has Big Pharma
reaching for the smelling salts.

While other
drug companies chase the balding and the erectile-challenged,
Desmond-Hellmann keeps biotech pioneer Genentech focused on creating
drugs that make the difference between life and death. She spent years
battling AIDS in Uganda and cancer in Kentucky as both a physician and
a medical researcher, and those experiences have done much to shape
Genentech's current priorities. Thus far, she's overseen the clinical
trials and approvals of such successes as Avastin (colon cancer) and
Tarceva (lung cancer). She's also shepherding in a new era of
patient-targeted treatments with Herceptin (a breast cancer treatment
that works best on women who carry a specific pattern of genes) and
ensuring that Genentech's pipeline includes promising treatments for
ovarian cancer and basal skin cancer. Genentech is already hailed as a
pioneer, but if Desmond-Hellmann can turn cancer into a manageable
disease, she may well earn a place in the history books alongside the
likes of Jonas Salk.

But who is going to pay for Desmond-Hellmann/Genentech's wonder AIDS drugs in Uganda? Not the impoverished African AIDS victims. And certainly not Genentech who aren't in the business of giving away their products for free.

No, that money will come from philanthropic foundations, particularly the Gates Foundation, with its magnificently generous commitment to AIDS research in Africa. And where does Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett and his Foundation come in the two polls? Gates is #21 in Who Matters Now, while neither Melinda Gates or Warren Buffett aren't in the top 50. Meanwhile the Gates Foundation, with its $60 billion war chest and commitment to change the world, doesn't appear anywhere on the Wired 40.